Academic publishing is at root a kind of scam. The publishers get away with not paying
academics (or paying them very little) because academics mostly need the
publishing credits and the exposure which is vital to their academic survival,
and they are (supposedly) earning a living by teaching. This was the traditional model for the bulk
of the twentieth century. With regard to
an academic journal, like Tolkien Studies,
the editors make a contract with an academic publisher, who regularly brings
out each new issue of the journal and deals with all aspects of printing and
distributing. Most of the time (and this
is true for Tolkien Studies) the
editors receive nothing other than some extra copies of the finished issues of
their journal, donating time as well as personal costs while the publisher keeps
all the profit (if any) or absorbs the loss (if any).
This is the model upon which we at Tolkien Studies signed a contract with West Virginia University
Press in December 2003. Pat Connor was
then the director West Virginia University Press, and he told us that it
usually takes a new academic journal about five years to establish itself and
pay its own way. Just as volume 3 of Tolkien Studies was coming out in 2006,
Pat told us we’d managed to do this in three years. The trade offs with this kind of arrangement
are easily understood. We had a
publisher to publish and distribute our work, and our audience of Tolkien
readers and scholars had the opportunity to purchase their own copies of the
journal and support it—or at least to use the journal in libraries that had
purchased it. Not an ideal system, but the trade-offs made it work.
Other factors have grown up in recent years that complicate
this scenario. On the one hand, the
bean-counters at universities have been putting the squeeze on university
presses, not merely to break even, but to contribute to the fiscal bottom line
of the university. On the other hand,
the rise of electronic publishing has brought about some major changes in the
industry, and some of these changes are especially pernicious. These
ill-effects are mostly seen in the adding of a new set of middle-men between
the publisher and the reader—the firms that distribute “content”.
These firms make their money in various ways—e.g., via attaching advertisements
on the web, or by taking subscription fees. The people who get squeezed by this
scenario are the creators of the “content”—the writers, editors, artists,
musicians, etc. There is a fascinating book by Robert Levine that details this
problem in all of its manifestations called FreeRide: How Digital Parasites are Destroying the Culture Business, and How theCulture Business Can Fight Back; unfortunately, despite the subtitle (which
is slightly altered for its paperback edition) it doesn’t provide any feasible
solutions.
The way this problem arises in academic publishing is in the
rise of subscription databases for which libraries have to fork up an annual
fee just for access to large databases of various journals (and if a library doesn't pay the annual fee, it loses access to all of the back issues, which is not the case with printed volumes). The fees that are
charged to libraries amount to extortion, and some small fraction of these fees
are passed on to the original publishers of the various journals. This problem has been getting an increasing
amount of attention in the last year or two.
See:
“Library, Inc.” by Daniel Goldstein in The Chronicle of Higher Education
“Academic Publishers Make Murdoch look like a Socialist” by
George Monbiot in The Guardian
Many additional articles center their point around
scientific journals, but journals in the humanities are under the same yoke.
Some in the sciences have begun boycotts.
See:
“Publishers Be Damned!” by Stephen Foley, in The Independent
“Academics Revolt Against Elsevier’s Journal Pricing” by
Robert Andrews at PaidContent.org
So, how does this all relate to Tolkien Studies? Well, Tolkien Studies was picked up by Project
Muse, one of these subscription databases which can only be accessed at a
member library—i.e., one that pays Project Muse a subscription fee. Project
Muse in turn pays West Virginia University Press an annual fee based on usage
of Tolkien Studies articles. Though by contract West Virginia University
Press is supposed to supply the editors of Tolkien
Studies with an annual statement, the only time we actually got one was in November
2008. Here we learned that West Virginia
University Press was receiving a payment from Project Muse of nearly $20,000 for
usage on volume 5 (2008), this income being completely separate from the usual
subscriptions and expenses.
The timing of this financial statement coincided with Pat
Connor leaving West Virginia University Press.
A replacement took over as Director, with whom we had virtually no
contact for a few years. Gradually,
however, we noticed changes. After Tolkien Studies volume 6 came out, I
received queries from a good number of people asking why it wasn’t available
through Amazon, as each new volume had been in the past (sometimes in
discounted form). Eventually I was told
after querying the Press that the higher ups had decided to eliminate ISBNs on
the individual volumes and thus they could only be ordered directly from the
Press (direct sales equals more money for the press). The next year I learned that volume 6 had gone out of print (the only volume of Tolkien Studies to do so), and was told that for some reason the
Press didn’t do as many copies as with the other volumes.
As Book Review Editor for Tolkien Studies, I incurred additional expenses when mailing review
copies to reviewers, and buying copies of some books to be reviewed because a
number of publishers refused to supply review copies. (These expenses add up,
especially when you mail books overseas.) For the first several volumes, we editors
split these costs among ourselves. But as
I learned that West Virginia University Press was receiving healthy payments
from Project Muse, I checked with Pat Connor who told me that I could save my
receipts and the Press would cover those costs.
When I submitted my receipts (amounting to some $250) in
early 2011, the new Director, however, proved difficult and stand-offish,
refusing to reimburse me more than $100 and then refusing to have any further
discussion of the matter. It’s one thing
to do all this work on Tolkien Studies
for nothing, but it’s another to be treated like the lowliest orc, who must pay out
of their own pocket for the privilege of being a slave, owing to the
scorched-earth policies of the likes of Barad-dûr University Press. In fact it’s really galling. The impasse dragged on for many months, with various turns and wrinkles that I needn’t go
into here.
The end has been reached.
I have ceased all involvement with Tolkien
Studies. Things could have been
otherwise, but under the new climate of Mordor-styled publishing, I don’t fit
in. Like the scientists in the articles
referenced above, I must question the value of putting a institutional pay-wall between a
scholarly journal and its audience. It certainly doesn’t help scholarship by
diminishing access to a journal solely in order to fill the coffers of its
publisher and distributor. The old model
is broken, and there needs to be a new one. A fair one.
